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Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

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Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#61

Post by tmptmp »

t0pz wrote: post #50
csydas wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you're in the industry, I'd like to ask two "aggressive" questions in the spirit of genuine curiosity. That is, I am looking to learn a different POV from my own end-user anti-ad POV. Regarding point 1: >They are also working for the Advertiser better now than they did 10 years ago, as we are able to track and measure much better. What people haven't noticed is the fact that they have become more native, less intr…

I totally agree with you on point 1 as i work primarily with non-intrusive ad formats with content that is as relative as possible to the user. There are definitely many "bad" ads and i hate them myself but there is a mismatch between what we perceive and what the data tells us. And this is often the case in Advertising. Consider this: You see an annoying commercial on TV about Butter over and over again, over the co…

>>You see an annoying commercial on TV about Butter over and over again, over the course of a month. These are quite intrusive and you certainly wouldn't want to see it again, if you had the choice.

The very big difference between the TV ad and the intrusive web ad is: the web ad can run arbitrary (potentially harmful) code on my computer. So whatever you say adblocks are very important from end-user's POV.

I don't want to and won't sacrifice my safety just because some (shitty or non-shitty) publisher may be saved by playing the ads (malware) on my machine. These publishers may go to hell, I don't care.

Only textual or static image type inline (content) ads (also privacy respecting) are okay, at least for me.

edit: a typo

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#62

Post by crucialfelix »

maaaats wrote: post #13

If you ever think about relying on Google for your business, this linked thread is a good reason not to. You are at the mercy of helpful volunteers while Google is stonewalling anyone from ever reaching them and getting help.

business.google.com is like this too. No possibility to get our locations verified, all the "helpful" links just lead to the black hole of the forum.

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#63

Post by marak830 »

zzleeper wrote: post #52
chronid wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take away all the flash ads, the ads that start music (!), the ads that start video (!), and I will not block the site. Stop splitting articles in 1000 pages because you need to cram more ads in and I will unblock the site. Stop pushing useless overlays and pop ups into my face and I will turn the adblocker off. My first visit to a website is always with the adblocker disabled. The second visit depends on what ads I…

On my phone, I switched from Chrome to Firefox because many websites had ads that used the phone vibrator, others redirected to the play store, etc. It's insane and you can't disable it from Chrome...

This. That damn vibrate is so annoying. Especially as someone who wakes up 30 mins before my alarm, and decides to read news on my phone with my wife asleep next to me.

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#64

Post by biztos »

GoToRO wrote: post #22
jasonwen wrote: post #17

This year we will stop using AdSense altogether. No support at all and the payouts have been declining every year. With the increase of ad blockers, even less encouraging to use ads in general. Sometimes I wonder, are ads as we know it, dead? Everyone hates it, has real usability impact and security risks. Didnt get the email though...

I'm not sure that ads are the only ones to blame. I think the problem is with the web nature of the... Web. I just looked at a simple Wordpress plugin that implements a Call Now feature for mobile sites ( Call Now! ) and for some reason they include a bunch of scripts from PayPal and what not. The only solution to this is to have everything on a page come from the same origin.

> have everything on a page come from the same origin

Would that really be so bad?

It's not like you couldn't still hook into an ad network and all that, in fact if I were building something AdSense-like I would love to get API calls from the server instead of worrying about the browser. Things like WordPress could bake that into the server side and nontechnical publishers wouldn't have to even know the difference.

Of course, Google would still "need" to get its Orwellian Cookie somehow, but even that could be trivially done without loading the ads themselves from another origin.

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#65

Post by misnome »

t0pz wrote: post #20
jasonwen wrote: post #17

This year we will stop using AdSense altogether. No support at all and the payouts have been declining every year. With the increase of ad blockers, even less encouraging to use ads in general. Sometimes I wonder, are ads as we know it, dead? Everyone hates it, has real usability impact and security risks. Didnt get the email though...

Let me provide you with some insight into your bewonderment: 1) I work in the Ad technology industry and i can tell you with confidence that ads are far from dead. The human logic of "We hate it, so it must not be working" is understandable but condradicting the actual data entirely. I look at this data on a daily basis and i can tell you that Ads have increased by a LOT in the last 10 years. They are also working fo…

I installed ad blocking on my phone when half the (high profile) websites I visited just ended in an endless loop of app-store redirects, non-loading full screen images (that blocked interaction anyway) and interactive 'games' that make you sit and wait for however long they felt they could get away with.

If it were only smaller, unobtrusive banners/inline separate ads it'd be tolerable, but it isn't. The ad industry has done this to itself. I'd compare it to the Tea Party rather than piracy.

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#66

Post by susam »

t0pz wrote: post #53
awalton wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what kind of hard stuff you're on, but a claim that AdBlock Plus has a keylogger is a pretty damned bold one, and you're going to need to back that up with some heavy duty proof. Here's the codebase[1], feel free to point out where in there it is so you can be headline news on HN/Reddit/{Insert News Outlet} tomorrow. Maybe you will be the one to finally kill AdBlock Plus, wouldn't you like that? 1: https…

github does not reveal the part of their code that is hosted on Eyeo's servers. While i certainly can't prove that they do, you also can't use their repo to determine what else they do in the background, leaving it up to "trust" again, as usual. Also, i couldn't care less about some headline. I would like a discussion, not e-pride

Some secret code hosted on Eyeo's server cannot magically collect keystrokes made on a user's web browser. There has to be a client side JavaScript code or a plugin on the web browser that collects this data and sends it to the server, and therefore, one would be able to point to the plugin or the piece of code that runs on the web browser that does sends the keystrokes related data back to the server.

At the very least, one would be able to see the data (or suspicious data, if it is obfuscated) being sent from the web browser to the server in the 'Network' tab of the web browser's inspector/developer-tools. Do you see any such suspicious data being sent from the web browser to the server? Can you post a screenshot if you do?

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#67

Post by csydas »

t0pz wrote: post #50
csydas wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you're in the industry, I'd like to ask two "aggressive" questions in the spirit of genuine curiosity. That is, I am looking to learn a different POV from my own end-user anti-ad POV. Regarding point 1: >They are also working for the Advertiser better now than they did 10 years ago, as we are able to track and measure much better. What people haven't noticed is the fact that they have become more native, less intr…

I totally agree with you on point 1 as i work primarily with non-intrusive ad formats with content that is as relative as possible to the user. There are definitely many "bad" ads and i hate them myself but there is a mismatch between what we perceive and what the data tells us. And this is often the case in Advertising. Consider this: You see an annoying commercial on TV about Butter over and over again, over the co…

Thank you for the response - I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted, so sorry for that.

The reason I asked on the benefit to the end-user is because a lot of what was listed about how ads have gotten better is very advertiser/content provider focused. Even relevancy seems more like a symptom of success for the advertiser rather than success for the user.

I am going to assume that I am an outlier case for many of your scenarios, as that's not really how I tend to search for things or decide what to purchase. For things like flights, I almost invariably use ITA Matrix to research and then purchase directly from the airlines, as having relied on site deals in the past either did not provide the promised discount amount or left me standing when the flight got oversold. In other instances, the ads led to a lot of contentless websites.

I guess I'm within the section that is very untrusting of advertisements. Past experience prior to my use of an adblocker left a bad taste in my mouth, and when I work on computers without an adblocker, even for ads that I don't find obtrusive past experience has just taught me to be reluctant. An over-active imagination and some knowledge of how computers work has likely left me in a very mistrusting state.

How would you propose, as an advertiser, to alleviate people in that state? This isn't exclusive to paranoid tech people like myself either (I am calling myself that, not putting words in your mouth), as when I did support for some time, my customers would constantly complain about advertisements, and the times that bad-ads got bad enough to actually infect the computer was enough to convince your average college student that an adblocker was essential. And I am not embellishing when I say "essential"; most wanted to know straight up what to use to keep ads gone.

If this is what you're battling, how do you think the industry should respond (or is?) in order to try to restore trust?

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#68

Post by adsense_is_crap »

ggggtez wrote: post #44

I think it's pretty clear this is not a hack. Please reserve your need to argue about ad block, which is way off topic and irrelevant...

The apathy of you, and most other users is as shocking to me as the the greed that is undermining our privacy. To them, our data which constitutes your identity, is a commodity.

Unless we confront this status-quo that is the greed that would reduce you to a fucking "click impression"s your privacy, dignity and experience will be dominated by a culture of selling to you.

All this to say, @gggtex, that Adsense and its ilk's destruction are far from "irrelevant".

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#69

Post by RubyPinch »

t0pz wrote: post #59
mirimir wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far, one can still uncheck the "Allow some non-intrusive advertising" box in Filter Preferences.

aside from the fact that less than 2% of users actually do this, it is still quite arbitrary how they determine intrusive and non-intrusive. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt to improve on this. But the amount of trust given to Adblock Plus is ridiculous. They are a money-grubbing extortionist company that is in no way improving the advertising landscape at the moment. They are just taking full advantage of the…

Can you give a couple of examples of how you feel it is arbitrary?

And you are not really giving any "benefit of the doubt" by calling them scammers straight out, are ya?

Re: Reports of cancellation of AdSense accounts

#70

Post by RubyPinch »

t0pz wrote: post #20
jasonwen wrote: post #17

This year we will stop using AdSense altogether. No support at all and the payouts have been declining every year. With the increase of ad blockers, even less encouraging to use ads in general. Sometimes I wonder, are ads as we know it, dead? Everyone hates it, has real usability impact and security risks. Didnt get the email though...

Let me provide you with some insight into your bewonderment: 1) I work in the Ad technology industry and i can tell you with confidence that ads are far from dead. The human logic of "We hate it, so it must not be working" is understandable but condradicting the actual data entirely. I look at this data on a daily basis and i can tell you that Ads have increased by a LOT in the last 10 years. They are also working fo…

You talk of native ads, + bloggers being ruined by ad blockers (with all their near zero operating costs?). Isn't native/sponsorship ads practically the perfect fit for blogs? along with being unblockable?
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